Economy prompts GOP defections

Congressional Democrats, pushing controversial legislation to help struggling homeowners escape foreclosure, have an unlikely ally in their fight against conservative and industry opposition: Republican Rep. Steve Chabot of Ohio.

In his 13 years in the House, Chabot has earned a 97.5 percent lifetime rating from The American Conservative Union and has largely stuck to the Republican ranks, except to oppose some pork-laden spending bills.

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But when foreclosures in his hometown of Cincinnati skyrocketed, Chabot found himself aligned with Democrats — and against his party’s leaders, his conservative colleagues and the White House.

Chabot’s bipartisan dalliance illustrates how tough economic times could erode the Republican conference that House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) is counting on to blunt Democratic victories running up to the November elections.

In the recent debate over a stimulus package, Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.) broke ranks to push for Democrat-backed extension of unemployment insurance benefits. And, in the foreclosure bankruptcy debate, Chabot’s fellow Republican Ohio congressman, Michael Turner, recently joined him as a co-sponsor of the bill. Turner’s district includes Dayton, where the foreclosure rate is even higher than in Chabot’s Cincinnati.

Chabot, and now Turner, supports empowering bankruptcy judges to help homeowners keep their houses, an adjustment supporters say could avert as many as 600,000 foreclosures.

It is legislation that is being driven through the House by Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), whose lifetime conservative score sits at just 5 percent but whose hometown district woes mirror those of Chabot’s district. Conyers’ hometown of Detroit led the nation’s cities in foreclosures last year, according to RealtyTrac Inc.

“Rep. Chabot is in a bellwether state, … so he’s seen the problems firsthand, closer than other representatives,” said Eric Stein, senior vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, one of the consumer groups pushing for the bankruptcy measure.

Chabot’s support is crucial, Stein said, because the legislation will need bipartisan support to clear Congress.

Chabot came to Congress during the 1994 GOP takeover. He narrowly won his seventh term in 2006 with 52 percent of the vote, after his hometown paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, reversed course from the previous election and endorsed his Democratic challenger. The paper, which favored Republicans for most other races, said Chabot’s “effectiveness seems to have peaked.”

The subprime mortgage crisis hit the national consciousness the following summer, but the alarm had sounded in Ohio earlier. Ohio’s Democratic governor, Ted Strickland, announced the creation of a foreclosure prevention task force in March.

That same month, Democratic State Rep. Steve Driehaus announced his plans to challenge Chabot in the state’s 1st Congressional District, which the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sees as ripe for takeover.

Chabot, meanwhile, was seeing the effects in his own neighborhood of Westwood on Cincinnati’s West Side, where small but sturdy middle-class homes, many more than 100 years old, line the streets. Even Westwood’s nicest streets suffered foreclosures, leaving behind vacant, uncared-for properties.

“It creates blight, and that hurts a neighborhood that’s on the cusp,” said John Eby, president of a nonprofit business development group that has lobbied Chabot, along with state and local officials, to do more to alleviate the housing pain. “Westwood’s a neighborhood that can either shoot through the roof, it can be the next Hyde Park, or it could be the next Gary, Ind.”

“Steve sees that everyday,” said Eby, who lives two blocks from Chabot. “When he’s driving to the airport, he’s driving by a lot of these houses that have been foreclosed upon.”

Cincinnati, while not the hardest-hit city in Ohio, still ranked 33rd on a national list of metro foreclosures for 2007, up 104 percent from 2006. Ohio, where foreclosure filings spiked more than 200 percent since 2005, ranked sixth last year among states suffering from the housing meltdown.

In late September, Reps. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) and Linda T. Sanchez (D-Calif.) introduced a bill that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of any primary residential mortgage, which current law prohibits.

A few weeks later, Chabot introduced a more limited version of the same proposal. And a November editorial in the Enquirer praised him and other officials for seeking creative solutions to the problem.

Although Miller and Chabot have served in Congress together for the past six years, the two men rarely interacted. But when Chabot introduced his version of the bankruptcy bill, Miller approached him on the House floor, “and we talked, and we continued talking,” Miller said.

Negotiations moved to the Judiciary Committee, where Conyers’ and Chabot’s staffs worked to find middle ground.